With Idul Fitri festivities about a month away, local airlines have started scheduling additional flights to meet increasing demand during the fast breaking celebration in mid-July.

Garuda Indonesia'€™s low-cost arm, Citilink, has proposed that the Transportation Ministry provide 17 extra flights with a total of 97,920 additional seats during the holiday season to serve travelers heading home.

'€œThe capacity will increase around 18 percent compared to our normal seat capacity. The additional frequency will serve routes to several cities in Sumatra, including Padang (West Sumatra), Medan (North Sumatra) and Pekanbaru (Riau), as well as several cities in Java, including Surakarta (Central Java) and Surabaya (East Java),'€ Citilink'€™s CEO Albert Burhan told The Jakarta Post Tuesday.

Every year, millions of people return to their hometowns to spend Idul Fitri with their families in an exodus known as mudik. The peak of this year'€™s exodus is expected to be between July 14 and 16, three days prior to Idul Fitri.

National flag carrier Garuda Indonesia has also previously stated that it prepared as many as 1.6 million seats during the holiday, from July 9 to 27.

According to Garuda'€™s corporate secretary Pujobroto, the number of seats will increase 8 percent from 1.49 million in 2014.

The carrier is set to provide an additional 16,044 seats by operating bigger aircraft and also operating extra flights during the holiday season.

The company will add eight extra flights for the Jakarta-Yogyakarta route, 16 extra flights for the Jakarta-Denpasar route, four extra flights for the Jakarta-Sydney route and four extra flights for the Jakarta-Perth route.

Meanwhile, AirAsia Indonesia, an associate carrier of Malaysian budget airline AirAsia, has arranged for an additional 3,960 seats for Jakarta-Yogyakarta flights starting from July 9 and continuing until July 28.

'€œWe have also proposed additional seats for the Jakarta-Singapore, Jakarta-Denpasar and Bandung-Denpasar routes, but we are still waiting for the slot approval,'€ AirAsia corporate secretary Audrey Progastama Petriny told the Post. She said the airline is planning to provide an additional 7,920 seats for the extra flight frequencies.

The country'€™s largest low-cost carrier, Lion Air, has proposed around 18,000 additional seats to the Transportation Ministry to cater to Idul Fitri travelers, according to the carrier'€™s operational director Capt. Daniel Putut Kuncoro Adi.

Transportation Ministry director general for air transportation Suprasetyo previously said that Sriwijaya Air and Sriwijaya Air'€™s sister company, Nam Air, have also planned extra flights during the holiday.

Suprasetyo said that Sriwijaya had requested 13 flights, meanwhile Nam Air requested two extra flights connecting Jakarta and several other cities, such as Surakarta, Yogyakarta and Denpasar.

The government estimates that the number of travelers using public transportation will reach 20 million during the Idul Fitri holidays this year, a 2 percent increase from the 17.4 million people recorded last year.

The data also show that the number of air travelers during the exodus will increase around 8.5 percent from 3.9 million last year.

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